After 50 Years, Asian American Studies Programs Can Still Be Hard To Find

1/18/22, 4:06 PM After 50 years, Asian American studies programs can still be hard to find
ASIAN AMERICA
After 50 years, Asian American studies programs can still be

hard to find
“For a program like this to take off, you need the students — because nothing happens without the
students pushing for it."
A large contingent representing Asian Americans for Peace rally for an end to the Vietnam War through
the streets of Los Angeles Little Tokyo on Jan. 17, 1970. Courtesy Visual Communications Photographic Archive
June 27, 2019, 11:26 AM PDT / Updated July 3, 2019, 12:27 PM PDT
By Agnes Constante
Duke University had seen its Asian American student population more than double from 1990 to
2000, but some students and faculty then felt the university's course offerings didn't reflect the
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/after-50-years-asian-american-studies-programs-can-still-be-n1022331 1/11
student body.
To address the issue, they campaigned — at first unsuccessfully — for an Asian American studies
program. In 2002, students and faculty hosted a teach-in, but political will died down.
Efforts began in earnest again in 2013 following a much criticized “Asian-themed” Duke fraternity
party and the more than 15-year push came to an end last year when Duke launched its Asian
American Studies program. It is the only one of its kind in the American South, according to its
director, Nayoung Aimee Kwon.
“For a program like this to take off, you need the students — because nothing happens without
the students pushing for it — and you need faculty and the administration working together,” she
said. “For all three to line up, it’s almost like a miracle for that to happen.”
Album Duke Doesn't Teach Me
Asian American Studies Working Group at Duke University

about 4 years ago
'Duke Doesn't Teach Me' was a photo project led by the Asian American Studies Working Group at Duke
(AASWG) in the Spring and Fall semesters of 2017. As we continue push for Asian American Studies here
on Duke's campus, and as we continue to learn about our histories and our communities, we are also
thinking about the missing pieces in our education and imagining what our lives would look like if we had
access to the knowledge that makes us who we are. As young people living ... See more — with Greta Chen
and 3 others.
Duke Doesn't Teach Me

5 Photos
152 1 45
Duke is one of the latest colleges to establish an Asian American studies program among a push
across U.S. campuses for the field of study. According to the College Board, the not-for-profit
group that administers the SAT, 25 U.S. colleges and universities offer majors in Asian American
studies. The number does not include institutions like Duke that have a program but don't offer a
degree.
Asian American studies dates back to the five-month strike in 1968 led by Third World Liberation
Front, a coalition of student groups who demanded the creation of programs that focused on the
histories of people of color. The term Asian American was created that same year, according to
activists and academics.
The first Asian American studies curricula were established at the University of California,
Berkeley, San Francisco State University and the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1969.
But only a handful of post-secondary institutions offer degrees in the field today.
Fighting for Asian American studies

Campaigns to bring Asian American studies to the campuses can often be lengthy and dependent
on students, Kwon noted.
“Since the major historical push for ethnic studies 50 years ago with the Civil Rights Movement,
every program pretty much … didn’t emerge out of the university and the leaders and the faculty
proposing it,” she said. “It’s usually students and activists fighting very, very hard for years and
years before we can push through the inertia.”
Various groups of students at Harvard, for example, have campaigned for more than four
decades for an Asian American studies program. In that time, activists have submitted a dozen
proposals for the university to invest into a program.
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Jeannie Park, who graduated in 1983 and is president of the Harvard Asian American Alumni
Alliance, said the wait has been frustrating. The alliance earlier this year called on the university
to formalize an ethnic studies program following the departure of two tenure-track faculty
members who specialized in Asian American studies.
In a recent positive development, the university's faculty of arts and sciences — under which a
theoretical ethnic studies department would be housed — announced it would hire three to four
senior faculty specializing in ethnic studies.
“I think the approach at Harvard is they want to bring the faculty first, and then build the
program around what the faculty see as the best way to do it,” Park said. “So it’s still a little
slower than some of us would prefer, but it seems like there’s a new level of commitment we
have not seen before.”
Harvard did not respond to a request for comment.
A rally during a 1995 hunger strike for Asian American studies in front of University Hall at Northwestern
University. Jen Abellera, Eric Salcedo and Rob Yap are at the microphone. In 2016, Northwestern began
offering an Asian American studies major.
Courtesy of the Northwestern University Asian American Studies Program
Students at Davidson College in North Carolina are also advocating for an Asian American studies
department, starting from the bottom up.
Cathy Xu, co-founder of a group on campus called the Asian American Initiative, said the group
is hoping to gain student support by hosting weekly dialogues on topics including the
emasculation of Asian American men and fetishization of Asian American women.
She said that response to the dialogue series has been positive, with a high attendance of 33
students and many returning week after week.
The initiative plans to approach the administration about a program in the upcoming school
year. Xu added that she doesn't expect that a department will be created by the time she
graduates, but she plans to continue advocating even after graduating.
Challenges and benefits

But because students inevitably graduate, momentum advocating for the programs tend to wax
and wane.
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Students at Georgetown University's Asian-Pacific Islander Leadership Forum, for example, are
new to pushing for a program and are aware that alumni have previously advocated for one,
Jennifer Sugijanto, a member of the forum’s leadership team, said.
And when administrators are slow to act, it can result in a certain level of fatigue for students,
Park, the Harvard alum, said.
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Catherine Choy, chair of the department of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, said one obstacle to
convincing a university's administration to institutionalize Asian American studies is the
perception that ethnic studies is useful only for a subset of students.
“That students can’t do anything with Asian American studies training, there’s so much evidence
that shows that that’s just not true and that ethnic studies and Asian American studies actually
contributes so much to the professional success and well-being of our students,” she said.
Graduates of Berkeley's Asian American and Asian diaspora studies program have gone on to
pursue a wide range of careers, Choy said, including leading nonprofits, teaching and writing.
Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen graduated from the program, she noted.
Russell Jeung, chair of the Asian American studies department at San Francisco State University,
said some of the university's graduates have gone into business, public office, health care and
social services. Asian American studies equips students with cross cultural competency, he
added.
“We’ve created change agents,” Jeung said. “We’ve empowered students to become leaders in the
community.”
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For May yer Thao, executive director of the Hmong Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce, exposure
to Asian American studies courses at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities was empowering
and helped her understand her “responsibilities to my Asian American and Hmong
communities.”
Thao advises multiple nonprofits and co-founded an informal group called ElevAsian dedicated
to spotlighting the Asian American presence in Milwaukee.
“It is about giving our communities a voice, raising our visibility, fighting for resources that
should also be shared with us, making room for our history and contributions to this country,
and accepting us as Americans as well,” she said in an email.
The future
The program at Duke, Kwon said, is unstable despite having completed its inaugural year. It
remains without its own faculty and relies on those who specialize in other fields to teach related
courses. The program also currently does not offer a certificate, minor or major, a goal that
appears far in the future, Kwon added.
Still, the program has advanced, hiring a program coordinator, a new full-time faculty member
and bringing a postdoctoral fellow on board. Kwon said the focus this upcoming school year will
be to work toward hiring more tenured and to build relationships with other programs to boost
visibility and ensure the sustainability of Asian American studies.
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As activists at colleges and universities continue to push for Asian American studies programs,
Choy said she hopes that post-secondary institutions across the country will come to recognize
why the field of study is significant.
She added that with the country's decadeslong history of Asian American studies programs,
there are many examples that advocates can look to.
“It’s striking to me given the demographic significance of Asian Americans in the United States —
that it is a group that has a more than a centurylong history and that continues to exponentially
grow in the 21st century,” she said. “We need Asian American studies really now more than ever.”

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1/18/22, 4:06 PM After 50 years, Asian American studies programs can still be hard to ﬁnd

After 50 years, Asian American studies programs can still be

June 27, 2019, 11:26 AM PDT / Updated July 3, 2019, 12:27 PM PDT

Album Duke Doesn't Teach Me

Asian American Studies Working Group at Duke University

Duke Doesn't Teach Me

Fighting for Asian American studies

Harvard did not respond to a request for comment.

Challenges and beneﬁts

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